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schliz writes “A group of Australian network engineers is planning to launch a not-for-profit internet service provider that will provide access to the nation’s high-speed NBN fibre network for like-minded people. The cooperative, dubbed ‘No ISP,’ has no staff or add-on services to keep costs down. Members will be able to ‘trade’ excess download quota for a market-based price, depending on supply and demand.”

An anonymous reader writes “The IT industry is a lot different than it was 10 years ago; it underwent a huge boom in terms of labor and services required to keep up with the times. Now, we are entering a consolidation phase. The cloud makes it easier for companies to host e-mail, so now instead of organizations having their own Exchange guy, they will outsource it to the cloud. Instead of having a bunch of network engineers, they will deploy wireless and no longer need cabling or current levels of network engineering services. What do you think the long-term consequences of this will be? What skills do you think will be useful in 10 years? Is IT going to put its own out of work, like we did with the post office and libraries?”

alphadogg writes “Policymakers disagree about whether the recent Chinese hijacking of Internet traffic was malicious or accidental, but there’s no question about the underlying cause of this incident: the lack of built-in security in the Internet’s main routing protocol. Network engineers have been talking about this weakness in the Internet infrastructure for a decade. Now a fix is finally on the way.”